I was shocked to hear at the recent public meeting in Chiswick that the anti-third runway campaigners (HACAN and CHTR etc) deliberately DO NOT use the increased risk of a major crash to support their case. The reason being that whenever this has been done in the past "the media" have immediately lambasted the campaigners as scaremongers and ignorant Nimbys.

However, I) the proposed increase of 250,000 take-offs and landings must increase the risk of a major disaster (planes are fallible machines that no matter how sophisticated they are can still and do still fail catastrophically) 2)No other major city in the developed world routes planes coming into to land over densely populated areas such as central and west London.

A clever economist may be able to construct an argument for the third runway at Heathrow (with lots of ifs and buts and caveats) but is still a fundamentally stupid idea when looked at from the safety perspective. We do not have to take this risk so why do it?